Metropolitan of $fortaleza belongs to the mesorregio and the microregion of $fortaleza. The city developed it the edges of the Paje stream, north-eastern of the country. Its toponymy is aluso to the Schoonenborch Fort, constructed for the dutches during its second permanence in the place between 1649 and 1654. The motto of the city (present in its blazon) is the Latin word in ' ' Fortitudine' ' , that in Portuguese it means: ' ' force, value, coragem' '. It is located in the Atlantic coast, with 34 beach km, to an average altitude of 21 meters and is center of a 313,8 city of km of area and 2 505 552 inhabitants, being the capital of bigger demographic density of the country, with 8 001 hab/km. It is the city most populous of the Cear, fifth of Brazil and 91 more populous of the world. The Region Metropolitan of $fortaleza possesss 3.655.259 inhabitants, being the fourth most populous one of Brazil, and the second northeast one. In recent study of the IBGE, $fortaleza it appears as metropolis of the third bigger urban net of Brazil in population.

The capital of the Cear is one of the looked tourist destinations more of Brazil, the city has received a number annual each bigger time from foreign tourists, especially of Italy, Portugal, U.S.A., Holland, France, Germany, Argentina, Spain, Handle Verde and England, according to Ministry of the Tourism and the FIPE (Economic Foundation Institute of Research) in research carried through in 2008. Such peculiarity happens of the force of the politics of incentive to the tourism, implanted at a first moment, with the PRODETUR (Program of Action for Development of the Tourism) north-eastern Brazilian, still in 1995 and extending itself up to 2005. The PRODETUR-NE was a program with regional dimension that prioritized the littoral spaces, and in the Cear it was concentrated in the RMF.